I went camping in
Big Basin Redwoods State Park a few weeks ago with some good friends (one of whom, my former teammate/Homegirl4Lyfe, Crystal, better documented the weekend
here).
Elliott brought a single-speaker cassette player. At night, when we gathered around our campfire, it provided our music, and it was appropriate: a small, haunted sound in the vast wilderness. To conserve batteries, El rewound his tapes by sticking a pencil through the reel and spinning incessantly. Camping affords you the privilege of doing things the hard way -- to expend such luxurious effort.
Elliott still records off the radio, so we listened to a lot of that -- songs from San Francisco's
KPOO and
Rhapsody in Black. It was a junior high throwback, like the mix tapes I’d made from radio recordings as a kid: the jerky mid-song starts -- when I'd rush to my tape deck and hit record just as my new favorite song was pouring from the speakers -- or the premature endings when the tape ran out unexpectedly. Of course, Elliott has much better taste in music than I did then.
When we drove into Santa Cruz on Sunday, Elliott went into a record store and came out with two purchases: cassettes -- Siouxsie and the Banshees and Neil Young -- $2 a pop.
El gave me the tattoo on my bicep a few years ago. It looks a little like I got bored and drew on my arm -- people often ask if it's a pen mark -- but it's actually a music note, etched into my skin with a needle and india ink. Crystal has a music note too, also administered by Elliott, but hers appears more polished. El has a handful of these small, homemade tattoos -- a music note here, question mark there, various squiggles. Once, when someone asked him what was up the music note, he replied, indignant, "I
love music."
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The weekend after Big Basin, my brother, James, came to town with his friend, Sam. It was after midnight on a Friday when they arrived, wanting to see Hollywood. I drove to the Cahuenga crawl and released them into the thick of it -- where creatures in too-tall platforms swayed and vomited onto the Walk of Fame.
The next morning, James and Sam showed me their new tats, acquired on Hollywood Blvd. for a $100 apiece. On my brother’s chest was a black hole, ostensibly left there by some imaginary bullet. From the hole, blood splattered across his chest like red rays from a black sun. Next, Sam showed me his: a purple music note -- big, bubbly, airbrushed-looking and occupying most of his forearm. It floated there, snarky and effervescent. In solidarity, I showed him my own music note. He brought his face closer to my bicep, squinting, as I flexed instinctively.